Privacy safety

[regvpn 0]

How safe is the personal data and log information with Airvpn these days? How about data retention for logs, payment and account activity information? 
We hear on the news that Italy is cracking down on human rights and one has to wonder how safe the users actually are, before the government starts knocking and seises all the data?

[Casper31 73]

I agree we live in a challenging time!
But stick to the internet,I think Air is a trusty vpn. You can't find any trackers on this website nor in the app "Eddie".
To be secure And Private,you have to do more than have a very good vpn.Its a continuous learning proces.
https://odysee.com/@RobBraxmanTech:6   (brax.me)
https://www.youtube.com/c/SunKnudsen/videos  (Sun Knudsen for apple stuff)
There is more... .

GR,Casper
 

[Staff 9972]

On 11/25/2021 at 12:17 AM, regvpn said:

Italy is cracking down on human rights and one has to wonder how safe the users actually are, before the government starts knocking and seises all the data?

Hello!

Italy is in breach of THREE legally binding CJEU decisions on Data Retention from 2014, 2016 and 2020 (*) and we have therefore no servers in Italy (other EU countries are in breach too, and we are already fighting in Spain, so we don't want more "battle/legal" fronts).

Apart from that serious and unacceptable breach of human rights in disdain of multiple decisions of the highest court of the European Union (which hopefully will soon cause the opening of an infraction procedure by the Commission against Italy), can you be more specific about how Italy would be cracking down on human rights?

About "seizing all the data", nobody can seize data which does not exist. Make sure you do not enter (but who would?) personal data in your account details, we don't even require an e-mail address (but if you use it for your comfort, make sure you use one which can not be exploited to disclose your identity or other personal information).

(*)

The Court of Justice declares the Data Retention Directive to be invalid
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-04/cp140054en.pdf

The Members States may not impose a general obligation to retain data on providers of electronic communications services
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2016-12/cp160145en.pdf

The Court of Justice confirms that EU law precludes national legislation requiring a provider of electronic communications services to carry out the general and indiscriminate transmission or retention of traffic data and location data for the purpose of combating crime in general or of safeguarding national security
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2020-10/cp200123en.pdf

Kind regards
 

[regvpn 0]

Italy has created a precedent when government can demand people to do whatever it wants without any regard to human rights. Lockdown, de facto forcing people to do stuff to their bodies, banning them from work. 
Along this lines, nothing can stop the government to subpoena all the Airvpn records and logs. 
In you response you glaze over the logs issue and data retention. What and how log this information "does exist"? 
According to VPN site your servers are based in Italy, it would be helpful to update it on your own site if it's not the case.

[Staff 9972]

2 hours ago, regvpn said:

Italy has created a precedent when government can demand people to do whatever it wants without any regard to human rights. Lockdown, de facto forcing people to do stuff to their bodies, banning them from work.

Hello!

Suspension of constitutional rights in a state of emergency is foreseen by the Constitution itself, which explicitly mentions sanitary/public health emergency. A state of emergency, in any case, must be approved by the majority of the Parliament, it can't be declared unilaterally by the Government, and has a clear end time, after which it must be renewed again with Parliament majority approval, otherwise it ends. Human rights suspended in Italy have been suspended even in many other countries belonging to the so called "Western democracies", it's not that Italy is so special here.
 

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Along this lines, nothing can stop the government to subpoena all the Airvpn records and logs. 

This has nothing to do with the above. It can be enforced even without the state of sanitary emergency. Such subpoena can't acquire anyway data which does not exist, obviously.
 

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In you response you glaze over the logs issue and data retention. What and how log this information "does exist"? 

We already told you very clearly that such traffic data retention does not exist in our infrastructure, and we mentioned the relevant EUCJ decisions on the matter to explain why some EU countries we operate servers in can't legally oblige blanket data retention in spite they try to do so, so they can be challenged successfully if a casus belli emerges.. The Privacy Notice is very clear about it too and you explicitly accepted it years ago, so you may not claim you don't know it under a legal point of view. The Privacy Notice is linked at the bottom of all of our web pages. Here some excerpt for your comfort:
 

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Air servers and software procedures in general do not acquire personal data.
[,,,]
Activity traffic and/or traffic content and/or IP addresses of the customers or users are not inspected, logged or stored into any mass storage device.
[...]
Users do not need to enter any personal data to access Air services.
[...]
A valid e-mail address is NOT required to access Air services and/or receive technical support, so usage of a valid e-mail address remains totally optional.
[...]
Users have the right to ask for information about their data and to ask for deletion of any data pertaining to them with a simple written request by e-mail to: info (at) airvpn (dot) org.

 

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According to VPN site your servers are based in Italy, i

Maybe in your fantasy? Please point us where it is stated, because it's not true. Currently in Italy we operate only a geo-routing server, which is irrelevant for VPN data protection.

Kind regards
 

[blueport26 11]

Hello,

Here's my opinion and how I see it. One time I was curious why AirVPN chose not to have a server in Poland (where I live), as it's part of European Union. Here is the related topic.
It turns out AirVPN has one of the most (if not the most) strict policies on server colocation. From what I understanding (in Europe) they only have servers in jurisdictions where there are no laws mandating mass data collection by telecommunication providers. The same supposedly applies to Italy.
Most VPN companies (even the ones recommended by privacy conscious people) doesn't go that far and have servers all over the world (some ever have physical servers is Russia...) and for the most part get away with it without any scandals (it's hard to brute-forece data from properly secured VPN server, even if it's seized by authorities - see ExpressVPN case).
In the end it boils down to what your threat model is, and if you accept mass (meta)data collection...

As for the place where the company is registered. It's common scare tactic used by marketers. To me it it's more important if the company is transparent, promises to store no logs and requires no personal data at registration. Most people who use VPNs for privacy reasons just want to hide from DMCA trolls or add one more shield to defend against mass surveillance.
As users we can only hope that AirVPN does what it promises in privacy policy and won't sell our data .
With court subpoenas no country is safe. In one it's a civilized legal process in other 'people' knock at your door and you have no rights. A no-log VPN will comply and reply that they have no information on requested person.

Of course, If you're a high profile person and suspect to be targeted, then just a VPN won't protect you. For that you must practice partition of trust (ex by using VPN and Tor in conjunction) among many other things...

Best regards

[regvpn 0]

You don't need to be rude or arrogant to press you point.  
Just google some of the stuff you said,  and it won't hold 
I am done discussing this, i really like people to have some manners 

[Staff 9972]

@regvpn

Therefore you are not able to substantiate your imaginary claim 
 

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According to VPN site your servers are based in Italy

We acknowledge it and we assure the community that "regvpn" will not be able to troll here and pollute the community forum anymore.